A Cup of Time
by Sakon76
Summary: In which Alice explores her relationship to Time.


**A Cup of Time**  
by K. Stonham  
first released 20th March 2010

She was thirty-two when she first heard the rumor.

"I'll swear she must be a witch," a woman's voice said, which was unsurprising as this was the powder room. Alice herself was tucked away into an inauspicious nook, straightening her spine before going back out into the ball. Sometimes a woman just needed a breath of air and time for herself.

"How so?" another, slightly lower, voice queried.

"Have you seen her? Not a day over twenty, I'd swear!"

"Don't we all wish we were so lucky," the second person laughs. "Though she is odd enough, I'll grant you. Still, Thomas says she's brilliant in business. Utterly mad, but brilliant."

"It's unnatural, a woman like that."

"Oh, hush." There was the sound of a door being opened, and the sound of the party drifted in through it. "You're just jealous you're not a Kingsleigh."

"Why, I never-" The door closed, cutting off the woman's voice and the party alike.

It was a moment before Alice stood and made her way to a mirror where she examined herself closely. She was dressed in her favored blue; it flattered her coloring and made her feel comfortable and confident. Her body was still firm and she still eschewed the wearing of a corset, to her mother's continued horror. But then her mother, she hoped, had long given up on ruling her younger daughter's life. Alice was her own person.

And her personage, she realized for the first time, looked no older than it had a dozen years ago, when she had entered the trading firm her father had built.

Her eyes widened. No, she corrected her inner thoughts, she looked no older than she had the last time she'd visited Underland.

She felt cool and calm and distant and wondered if she was in shock, or simply in control. The door to the women's retreat opened again, and the sound of the party made Alice automatically straighten her posture.

Later, she thought to herself. She would deal with this later. She had business to attend to.

Squaring her attractive shoulders back in the low-cut evening gown, Alice smoothed a stray wisp of hair and sailed back out into the ball, captain of her own destiny.

* * *

It was the next morning that Alice sat in her family's study, at her elbow a pot of the refreshing green tea she'd acquired a taste for in China, and went through her books. Oh, not her account ledgers; those sat neatly stacked to one side. No, what she went through now were myths and fairy tales. Over the thirteen years since she'd last set foot in Underland she'd taken to collecting them, seeking hints of her friends there through stories, and wondering what other fantastical things might be true in that kingdom. Houses that walked around on chicken legs? Entirely possible. A boy floating down a river in a rice bowl? It seemed entirely likely given her own experience with being different sizes. And a girl from her own world trapped underground for six months of the year for eating six pomengranate seeds? Perhaps all too likely...

Time was a funny creature, Alice mused, setting her book down and leaning back against the strong, masculine leather of her father's chair. Time could fly like the swiftest arrow, or plod along unwillingly like the dullest schoolboy. And, apparently, time could, would, and did stand still for her.

She'd long since figured out that Underland was a fairy country. How could it not be? And not being stupid, when she'd read more widely than she ever had before, Alice had connected it to the legends of Underhill, where the fairies reigned and to sip or sup at their table might do strange things to a man (or girl, or woman). Also, time moved strangely in such places. After all, she'd spent days there when she'd been nineteen and yet emerged from the rabbit hole a bare half hour after she'd fallen in. She hadn't thought it had done anything to her personally, though, except help her recover her muchness.

Apparently she'd been wrong. Had it been one of the White Queen's alchemies? A drink that made you shrink, a cake that made you grow, blood that sent you back home... Or had she drunk any tea at the tea party? Alice couldn't remember, but she did remember clearly that the Hatter had angered Time long, long ago. In fact, he hadn't aged a bit between her first pair of visits and her third! Of course, men aged differently than women and showed it less, but no, not a single wrinkle of difference had shown up in those thirteen years! Or perhaps it had been entirely accidental, her taste of the March Hare's soup at the White Queen's castle...

"O, whatever shall I do?" Alice murmured to herself. She couldn't stay here forever, not unaging as she apparently was. And, to be honest, she didn't want to. She'd fulfilled most everything she could think of to hold her here. Her family's fortunes were great, her father's company expanded beyond anyone's wildest dreams, her mother happily remarried, Lowell reformed under Alice's watchful eye, and she, personally, had set foot on every continent except Antarctica, learning everywhere she met.

Perhaps, Alice mused, it was time to go home. She wondered if they'd got all the letters she'd dropped down the rabbit hole, addressed in her neatest copperplate to "My Dearest Friends." There were still a few things she needed to tie up here, of course. She just couldn't disappear again without at least saying her good-byes! Alice opened the desk drawer and pulled out a sheet of clean paper. Taking a sip of tea to clear her thoughts, she dipped the nib of her pen into the inkwell. "To My Dearest Family," she began, and as she wrote, her thoughts were already full of Underland, and her next adventure.


End file.
